Open WL Archief (OWA)

Mary is a retired marine biologist. During her 35 year career with Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Nova Scotia) Mary spent many years collecting samples and identifying zooplankton from oceanographic cruises in the NW Atlantic, the arctic and the eastern tropical Pacific. As a data manager Mary served multiple terms on the IOC/IODE group of experts for biological and chemical data management and exchange practices (GE-BICH). Mary remains active in the development of vocabularies relevant to biological oceanography. Mary became the OBIS Canada node manager at the end of the Census of Marine Life and since retirement has continued to promote mobilization of species distribution data. Mary is active in promoting best practices in data management and in training students to share standardized QC data early in their careers. Mary served on the WoRMS SC as an ex officio member representing NWARMS – a regional species register for the Northwest Atlantic. Mary actively promotes WoRMS as a tool to resolve scientific names and to QC datasets. Mary is active in the recovery of historical datasets which often requires resolution of older scientific names that may not be in WoRMS. Combining her background that included species identification and data management, Mary’s role within WoRMS SC would be to clarify the role of regional registers and to determine the best methods to associate distribution, images and traits information with scientific names as well as training and promoting WoRMS (to whomever will listen). In addition, Mary is also involved in the HAB-group - a thematic portal in WoRMS on Harmful Algal Blooms -, where she's helping out with specific data management trainings.